…memories. Many of you can probably identify with this memory. Story hour for preschoolers? I lived in a community of all young families and our neighborhood was over run with preschoolers. In fact my sons’ birthday parties were attended by a minimum of 17 preschoolers. We mothers of these 17 decided that we should have a story hour, once a week, and each mother would take a turn reading. It would be held in my recreation room, there would be no snacks or drinks, and the mothers would drop them off. There would be the reader and myself. This seemed like it would be great fun and it turned out to be really great fun for them. (Not so much fun for the reader or I). They would all come bursting through the door with more energy then I probably have in a year now, and they were there to have fun, and boy did they. To get 17 of them to all sit at one time was impossible, and as the weeks went on they became more exuberant at being with their friends. Some mothers were better at keeping control than others, but it seemed it was always 2 against 17. Until one day a mother arrived to read and she had a beautifully wrapped gift, strung with colorful ribbons. It was a small gift that caught there attention immediately, and to be honest mine too. All eyes were fixated on this beautiful gift. They were bursting with excitement and anticipation as to what it was. She told them she would tell them but they had to sit down and be very quiet. They sat down immediately and didn’t make a peep. She spoke very softly so they had to be really quiet, and that she didn’t even know what the gift was. She told them when she went to bed the night before she was so worried. All of a sudden a little fairly appeared and asked her why she was so worried. She told the fairy that she had to read to them today and what if they couldn’t sit still, or they ran around and laughed and giggled. The fairy said that could be a problem but I can help you. I will leave you a gift in the morning and don’t open up until you are about to read. Shall I open it up she asked? They all screamed in unison, YES. She carefully opened it and peered in the little box and said it is full of gold dust. She showed them all and then read to them the little note the fairy had left. The gold in this box is fairy dust. If you sprinkle it on their heads it is magical and they will be able to sit and listen to the story. One by one they sat still as statues as she sprinkled their heads with gold dust. You are probably wondering how long this magical dust lasted. We did periodically reapply dust to certain little ones, and I vaguely remember it was probably good for a half an hour or so, but there isn’t probably enough fairy dust in the world to stifle the energy of a 3 year old for very long. Which brings me to the reason my memory was jogged. There is a website www.storylineonline.net where celebrities read stories to children. I went on it myself this morning and got caught up listening to several children’s stories and enjoying the illustrations of the books. Make sure to type .NET. Perhaps if you go on it, it too will bring back memories for you. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had a little fairy dust to aid in sitting quietly, it may come in very handy on these days of togetherness.